


Leaky Faucet

by MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Assault, Avengers Tower, Claustrophobia, Depression, Flashbacks, Knives, Leaked Footage, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Torture, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Video Cameras, Violence, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 20:36:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18818551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays/pseuds/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays
Summary: Random Villain Of The Week manages to leak all of the footage that FRIDAY has captured over the past year. The public expected banter, they expected training accidents and superheroes caught with their pants down.They didn’t expect to witness every time an Avenger’s past has come back to haunt them.—Aka, the avengers go through a lot of shit that the people didn’t know about. Until today.





	Leaky Faucet

Random-Villain-Of-The-Week turned out to be much more capable than the Avengers thought. He managed to bypass every block that Tony and Bruce had set on FRIDAY and the Tower. On Saturday night he obtained access to all the footage that FRIDAY had ever captured, and the entire world woke up on Sunday to a major shitstorm.

 

——

 

The timestamp read one-thirty-three in the morning. Grainy footage and tinny audio showed Tony Stark sitting alone in his personal bar, all the lights off but one. In front of him was a bottle of whiskey, still full and sealed. Tony picked the bottle up. He set it back down. He folded his hands beneath his chin and stared into the brown liquid as if it held all the answers he seeked, if only he could force himself to open it.

 

With a resigned sigh, slumped over the bar counter, Tony reached out for the bottle and broke the seal. Just as he raised it with a shaking hand to his chapped lips, a light clicked on from the hallway.

 

Tony lowered the bottle but did not release it as Pepper Potts, her hair in a tight bun behind her head and a white robe clutched tightly around her body, trudged wearily into the room. “Tony?” She asked blearily, rubbing her eyes. For a moment, she seemed confused. Then, her eyes moved to the bottle in Tony’s hand and her face fell.

 

”Oh, Tony,” she said, endless years of tired despair in her voice. She crossed the room with even strides and said nothing as she efficiently closed and packed away the bottle. 

 

She moved back to Tony and placed her hands on his shoulders. He didn’t look up from his hands, but his head twitched. “Tony,” she said softly, “let’s go to bed, okay?”

 

”No,” he murmured.

 

”Is it the nightmares again?”

 

Slowly, tentatively, Tony nodded. “It’s just—it’s like I’m back there again. Like I’m back in space or stuck under a thousand pounds of metal in Siberia. I can’t—I can’t  _sleep_ , Pep.”

 

”Tony, look at me,” she said. When he shook his head, she repeated herself, firmer this time. Hesitantly, his sad brown eyes met her own, shining with unshed tears. “You don’t have to sleep, alright? But come back to bed. Even just laying down is better than—well,  _this_. Okay?”

 

And then Tony asked, looking so incredibly small, “What if I fall asleep?”

 

Pepper shrugged. “I’d say that’s a good thing, but...I guess you can wake me up to talk with you. Okay?”

 

A long moment passed between them. Then, finally, Tony nodded, and Pepper smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go, huh?”

 

Slowly, Tony slid off of his barstool, Pepper leading him by the hand. They walked out of frame together, and a second later, the light clicked out.

 

Two hours of dark, silent footage later, a terrified scream sounded from the direction in which they left.

 

——

 

Two-thirty-three in the afternoon. The footage of the Avengers training room was dark and blurry, but Natasha was still easy to make out. Her fiery red hair contrasted from the black walls around her and the black clothes on top of her. She stood in the center of a circle of at least twenty rubber training dummies. She stood tensely, all of her muscles taut, a sharp dagger clenched in each hand and a fully loaded gun secure in its holster.

 

She closed her eyes. She took a deep breath.

 

Then, she attacked.

 

In a flurry of hands and gleaming metal, two dummies were already collapsed on the floor, knives buried deep in their rubber chests.

 

She knocked another one down with a sharp donkey kick, and used her lowered torso to grab the head of the dummy in front of her, cracking her skull against it. She fell to the ground from the excess momentum, but turned it into a roll, popping up from the floor and knocking another dummy to the ground in the process.

 

Fast as lighting, her gun was out of the holster and eight bangs sounded. Somehow, nine dummies hit the floor.

 

Out of frame, a door whooshed open. Natasha was flipping a dummy over her head as Sam Wilson walked calmly into the room, dressed in gray training clothes. 

 

He approached the the circle of fallen dummies nonchalantly. “Hey, Natasha, is anyone else—“

 

Before he could finish his sentence, Natasha had her knees pinning him to the floor, her elbow digging into his throat. Her eyes were a scary black, empty and angry as she used her free hand to throw one punch at his face, then two. A crack resounded through the room as blood spurted from Sam’s now-crooked nose.

 

”Natasha!” He sputtered through the blood, “It’s me, it’s Sam! You’re not in the red room!”

 

She didn’t reply. She brought his fist down again, snapping his head to the side.

 

”You’re not there any more, you’re safe, you’re in the Tower!”

 

It seemed like she didn’t even hear him. Sam struggled weakly against her hold, but didn’t make much of an effort to escape until she grabbed the empty pistol from beside her and clicked in another round of bullets. His eyes widened, large brown circles in a face full of red.

 

”Natasha, come on. You don’t want to kill me. I’m not them.”

 

She put the cold barrel of the gun to his temple. He clenched his eyes shut, and a week after the footage was released, someone would decipher his unintelligible whisper as, “I’m sorry.”

 

He with one arm free now, Sam tapped his high-tech bracelet. Seconds later, just as Natasha was cocking the gun, Sam’s wings flew in of their own accord. The scooped Natasha up and pinned her into the wall, the sharp corner of each wing digging into the concrete, wrapping her in metal feathers. She writhed violently against their hold, her black eyes trained on Sam—who was slowly getting to his feet—like a predator watching her prey.

 

Sam wiped the blood off of his top lip, but it was quickly replaced from the stream of red trickling out of his nose. He stumbled over to Natasha and asked, inches from her face, “Can I touch you?”

 

She breathed heavily but didn’t respond. Sam kept his hands at his side.

 

”Natasha, look at me. I am Samuel Wilson. You are Agent Natasha Romanov. Your best friend is Clint Barton. Your favorite drink is straight whiskey but you never say no to vodka. You are an Avenger and you are in the Avenger’s Tower. You haven’t been in Russia for years, and you haven’t been in the Red Room for even longer.”

 

Recognition started to cloud over Natasha’s face. She blinked hard, as if trying to work herself out of a stupor.

 

Sam continued, “You work for Nick Fury. You haven’t assassinated anyone in years. You are safe in America, okay? You’re safe.”

 

Natasha began to relax, panting and trembling. Sam raised his hands in front of him like a shield. After a long moment, Natasha opened her eyes. The hollow rage was gone, confusion and regret in its place. “...Sam?” She asked quietly.

 

”Yeah, Natasha.” He smiled sadly. “It’s just me.” He tapped his wrist again and the wings released her, clattering to the floor. She stepped over them gracefully.

 

”Did I, uh...did I go to the Red Room again?”

 

Sam just nodded.

 

”Fuck,” she grumbled. She started towards the door but swayed. Sam rushed to her side, slinging her arm over his shoulder. “Thanks. Sorry about your face.”

 

He laughed quietly, turning his back to the camera as they slowly limped out of frame. “It’s alright. My dad used to do worse.”

 

——

 

The footage was green. Night vision. The camera sat in the upper corner of a tiny broom closet.

 

An unknown, brown haired, doe eyed boy snapped his eyes open. Like a zombie, he had sleep-walked into the room and closed the door behind him, which melted back into a solid wall seconds later. He looked around himself, somehow taking in the cramped room even in the pitch darkness. His eyes widened. His breathing quickened.

 

The boy stretched his arms out, touching opposite walls with each hand. He pressed like he was trying to push them apart. They didn’t move, but as he pulled his hands away to tangle in his curly hair, noticeable dents were left behind. He scrunched his eyes shut and slid to the floor, drawing his knees up to his chest. He seemed to be having trouble pulling in full breaths, if his stuttering chest was any indication. A shuddering wheeze, loud and grating, sounded throughout the room. Instead of a releasing breath, a sob wracked the boy’s small body.

 

“Help,” he choked out, barely audible. He had started to shudder and sweat.

 

Then again, louder, he shouted, “Help! I can’t—I’m trapped, I can’t breathe, I’m—“ he cut himself off with a hacking cough. He took another rattling breath, somehow more strained than the last.

 

”Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered in a continual stream under his breath, struggling to pull in a full lungful of stale air. One hand slid down from his hair to his chest, clutching at the soft blue fabric he found there.

 

”Calm down,” he whispered to himself. “It’s just a room, you’re okay, you’re not at the warehouse, calm down, calm down.”

 

Another sob escaped from his lips. He lowered the last hand on his hair to muffle the sound, as well as the one that followed. He was still muttering, but it was muddled by the skin blocking his lips from the open air.

 

He rolled forwards, trembling on his hands and knees, sweat-soaked hair hanging down in strings and obscuring his face from view. Soon, though, his arms buckled beneath him, and his head hit the floor, clutched tightly between his elbows. His hands covered his neck, grasping at the skin so hard that it blossomed in purple and blue bruises beneath his fingertips.

 

His breathing had all but stopped and his body began to go slack as the door reformed. Somebody threw it open and light streamed in the room. The boy turned his head towards the silhouette, his cheek flush against the cold tile floor.

 

“Peter?” Tony Stark asked, already dropping to his knees beside the shaking boy.

 

”Peter, you need to breathe. You’re about to pass out, I can’t move you on my own. You need to breathe enough to crawl out of here, okay?”

 

Peter nodded and took another harsh wheeze. It broke into another sob and Peter fell limp to the floor again. He shook his head rapidly, slinging sweat and tears around the small room.

 

”Listen, kid, you’re not in the warehouse. It’s just me, you’re okay, alright?”

 

Peter nodded again, and this time his wheeze was a bit quieter, the rattling in his chest just a tad lower. He took another grating breath, then another. Sweat dripped down his pale face.

 

He rose Slowly from the floor to his hands and knees. Without a word to Tony, still struggling to pull in a full breath, Peter crawled out of the door, disappearing from view. Tony followed suit.

 

Only a few seconds after greeting open air, Peter’s breathing quieted back to normal. Tony’s voice said, “Are you going to be okay for the night?”

 

After another deep breath, Peter said, “Yeah. I’m sorry. Th-thank you.”

 

”It’s no problem, kid.”

 

The door closed once more, and the footage returned to dark brooms and the occasional spider.

 

——

 

And so the public learned something new. They watched the Avengers, these seemingly untouchable heroes, fall apart under stress that they could never even imagine and pick themselves back up before the sun rose.

 

They saw Clint Barton try hearing aid after hearing aid that Tony presented to him, eventually storming away in frustration when none alleviated the awful ringing that had been plagueing him.

 

They saw Vision barely phase through Wanda’s wall in time to watch as her red wisps of magic held a knife to her own throat. They saw him knock it away and cover her body with his own, knowing she would never risk harming the only person she still loved just to destroy herself.

 

They saw Steve clutch Bucky when he passed a tour group wearing authentic 1944 army uniforms. They saw Tony ban any sort of army uniform on tourists the very next morning.

 

They saw Tony bandage Rhodey’s face when he scraped half of the skin off of it after his legs gave out beneath him during physical therapy. They saw Tony tie his shoes for him before he got back on the treadmill, sweating at a sluggish pace and trying to will his shattered legs to move like they could only a few months ago.

 

They saw Bruce put a bullet in his mouth. The saw the Hulk spit it back out.

 

That day, the Random Villain didn’t achieve his goal, because the public thought no less of the Avengers after seeing their constant struggle to just live their own lives.

 

That day, the Avengers gained a newfound respect from the people of the world, one they never even thought to demand.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve had this idea for a while, comment and let me know how I did!!


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